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Experiencing a sand or dust storm can be frightening. As rolling clouds engulf everything in their path, the tempests turn day into night and wreak havoc on humans and nature. The most ferocious are like tsunamis of sand. These storms affect some 330 million people around the world, from Sub-Saharan Africa to Northern China to Australia. That tally is poised to rise.

More than 61,000 people died as a result of searing heat across Europe in the summer of 2022, according to a new study. The summer of 2022 was Europe’s hottest on record and was characterised by a series of record-breaking heatwaves. New research published in Nature Medicine explores the link between temperature and human mortality to assess heat-related deaths across…

Since 2015, global poverty reduction was already slowing down and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic reversed three decades of steady progress with the number of people living in extreme poverty increasing for the first time in a generation. Recovery from the pandemic has been slow and uneven as the world is presently facing multiple geopolitical, socioeconomic, and climatic risks. Given…

The number of people facing hunger and food insecurity has been on the rise since 2015, with the pandemic, conflict climate change and growing inequalities exacerbating the situation. In 2015, 589 million people were experiencing hunger, and by 2021, that number had risen to 768 million. Projections show that by 2030, approximately 670 million people will still be facing hunger – 8% of the world…

The pandemic and other ongoing crises are hindering progress in achieving SDG3, exacerbating existing health inequalities and threatening progress towards universal health coverage. As a result, 68 million children are known to be un- or under-vaccinated as of 2022 from TB and malaria increased. This has been particularly challenging in low- and middle-income countries, where health systems were…

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the world was already off-track to achieve its education targets. If no additional measures are taken, only one in six countries will meet SDG4 and achieve universal access to quality education by 2030. An estimated 84 million children and young people will still be out of school and an estimated 300 million student will still not have the basic numeracy and…